Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur.

Last night was High School Throwback Night!, as in canned beer, bowling, and parking lots. It has been more than four years ago since I've drunk beer out of a can or in a parking lot. It's also been a while since I went bowling. We used to go all of the time in high school. Our reason being that it was more than an hour away to get there so we'd be using almost all of our Friday nights in transit and wouldn't have to spend much at home.

With The Girls in Atlantic City for the weekend I had to turn to The Boys for fun. We decided to go midnight bowling because of my late night work schedule and while I was at work The Hoch and I decided we wanted to go drinking so we compromised on getting a case of beer and drinking it in a parking lot until it was time to go inside. While we were sitting in my car eating yogurt and sipping Yuengling or as it's know in my family: Chinese Beer (sometimes we're not the most politically correct people out there), league bowlers kept exiting their yellow castle and we kept having to duck down behind the dash so people wouldn't question any of our questionable activities. I admit that looking back on last night we were probably a little too overcautious and brought more attention to ourselves by constantly ducking instead of just sitting still in the dark car.

Bowling was a success (at least for me!) The Hoch and I took our drinking inside to the bar, but once the black lights came on and illuminated the quinine in my drink all I could was stare at the pretty glowing drink. I love science! The gin helped be bowl my best games though. I won all three games against The Boys and I won by quite a bit too. I'm not a big fan of bowling because it always makes my fingertips hurt afterwards but last night was really fun. It's nice to take a turn away from the usual norms and do something different for a change.

The science of Tanqueray and tonic.

"Don't say it, I know you're thinking." "No you don't, I was thinking about pantaloons."

The other day I dug out all of  my Guster music that I had and laid around listening to it and remembering all of those wonderful times in high school that I had with my friends. A long time ago I used to associate music with the events in my life, but I've had to stop because there were too many negative things attached with some of my favorite bands and I love music more than the negative things. Now I have gotten over the bad memories and have started listening to older music again, while remembering the good associations I have with it. Guster always brings me back to hockey and suicide sprints on the ice. When I was a sophomore Guster played a show at Higher Ground and a bunch of girls on the team decided to go. The concert was amazing. I remember my boyfriend at the time and I decided to wipe off the black X's that you get for being underage and then getting caught by the venue staff and being forced to go back and get new ones or get kicked out. I remember being in the front row and fall in love for the first time with a musician, Adam Gardner you'll always be my first. I remember when the band started playing Amsterdam that I almost peed my pants and I remember that all of the hockey girls that went to the concert had to spend half of the practice doing suicide sprints while everyone else took shots on goal.

Listen to Guster also made me remember the year I knew all of the words to all of the Coldplay songs that were out at the time. My friend Johnny Mac was obsessed with the band and spent every waking moment listening to them and when we would hang out at his house all we would do is listen to them. One time Johnny, Austin and I made a video of us playing cowboys and Indians (we were probably sixteen at the time) and we used Coldplay in the background. It was two minutes of us shooting Nerf guns at each other and then bouncing off the bed and out of the shot. It was supposed to be us falling off of a cliff, but each one of us looked like we were dancing at the end you could hear the oofs as we all landed on top of each other. I remember Lizzy and I would sing along to Yellow and Clocks and Green Eyes while we pined for our crushes and Katie had to choose between Johnny and Austin. Coldplay reminds me of old friendships and driving fast on dirt roads in purple jeeps.

Once I got through my Coldplay collection I found old Death Cab songs and Rooney. I miss Rooney, I wish they would put out some more music. Back when myspace was a thing I would put little Death Cab quotes all over my page and when everyone thought that Soul Meets Body was such an amazing and prolific song I was bopping around to The Sound of Settling. One day when I was at a friend's house her brother, who was home from prep school, asked if any of us had ever heard of the band Rooney. Being an avid follower of Robert Schwartzman and most of the other Coppolas I was the only one who had hear of Rooney and we started singing I'm Shakin'. It was really cool to know about something that other people hadn't even heard of because back then (and still today) I was always the last to know about anything.

I've been watching old episodes of The O.C. lately and almost all of the bands that I listened to in high school are featured in the series in some way or another. Hearing such amazing music has been making me nostalgic just the tiniest bit for when I younger and things seemed a lot simpler. Sure I still have some of the same issues and insecurities that I had back then, but I've learned a lot about not sweating the small stuff and that there are more important things in life than not getting invited to so and so's party. Of course I'm still in the infancy stages of my life and I have a long ways to go, but I have cultivated a strong group of friends and acquaintances who keep me on track and help me when I fall off of my high heels.